There is something rather pleasing about a street sign that has survived since 1755 and still does exactly what it was made to do which is to announce, without drama, that this was West Street. It comes from Bedminster, now part of Bristol, but historically a separate place south of the Avon, with its own parish, streets and identity before the city expanded around and into it.
I like random stuff like this because residents walked past this sign on their way to work, to market, to church, to the pub or to whatever little arrangement the eighteenth century had decided to inflict on them that day. Most of them presumably ignored it completely, which is usually the fate of useful things. Now it sits in a museum, looked at by people like me, apparently emotionally invested in carved municipal directions. I probably shouldn’t try and attribute meaning to so many things, but I doubt that very many of these survived.